An Assessment of Chinese Pathways to Implement the UN Sustainable Development Goal-11 (SDG-11)—A Case Study of the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration

Xueyan Xu, Jun Gao, Zhonghao Zhang and Jing Fu
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Xueyan Xu: Department of Tourism Management, Shanghai Business School, Shanghai 200235, China
Jun Gao: Institute of Urban Studies, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China
Zhonghao Zhang: Institute of Urban Studies, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China
Jing Fu: Institute of Urban Studies, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 13, 1-14

Abstract: Urban sustainability is a crucial part of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and one of the core objectives of China’s national strategy to promote new urbanization and achieve integration in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). This paper mainly focused on the 11th SDG, which is a universal call to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. The full permutation polygon synthetic indicator (FPPSI) method was applied to synthetically evaluate the sustainable level of 26 cities in the YRD urban agglomeration from 2007 to 2016. The results showed that: (1) the synthesis indicators were increasing year by year, which implied that the sustainable development of the YRD has shown obvious progress in recent years. However, each city faced its own challenges to achieving the sustainable development goals. The sustainability level for the majority of cities was restricted by obstacles such as the per capita green area, air quality and commercial housing sales area; (2) Among the 26 cities, small and medium-sized cities were subject to the traditional strong sustainability indicators while large and mega cities were more affected by weak sustainability indicators; (3) Spatial differences were found for the overall sustainable development level of the YRD. The diffusion and assembly effect among cities had not yet been formed; however, the strong spillover effect of developed cities might influence the ability of other cities to achieve sustainable development goals in many aspects of the environment, economy and society. The results suggest the need for a stronger focus on improving regional developing patterns and strengthening coordination in the process of achieving the sustainable development goal of urban agglomeration in the YRD. Furthermore, according to the conditions of different cities, integrated policies are required to address all aspects of sustainability and to avoid unintended consequences.

Keywords: urban sustainability assessment; sustainable development goals; full permutation polygon synthetic indicator (FPPSI) method; Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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